Down with NYC Chauvinism! An Article that Pisses me OFF! New Yorkers are not smarter.

I am really perturbed after reading Joan Acocella's article,You got a problem with that? in Smithsonian.  She argues that  New Yorkers are smarter than the rest of the country.  She says,

In my experience, many people believe that New Yorkers are smarter than other Americans, and this may actually be true...That means that the rest of us, statistically, are more high-strung, hungry and intent on long-term gains—traits that quite possibly correlate with intelligence.

She is being snarky, but she is definitely not joking.  Rescue me!  What kind of functionalist statement is this!  by saying that New Yorkers are just smarter than others is bullshit – it a self-legitimizing belief that reeks of a functionalist  and social Darwinism argument.  Essentially she is saying NYC functions as a city that contains really smart people who produce knowledge for the NYC economy and the rest of the world. 

Now I am a NYC snob – I think people on the whole here in NYC are more fashionable than the rest of this country (U.S.).   I love the attitude, the grittieness and the vanity of NYC. I love the relentless ambition - the stubborn drive to accumulate - to find the best purse, bar, cocaine, hair stylist, condo, bodega, friend, fling, job, neighborhood and so on and so on.  But never would I say that people here are smarter. I’ve encountered just as many idiots here as I have anywhere else.  If anything I meet more stupid people in NYC -because they truly think that because they live in NYC they are better and smarter than other people. 

NYC is a popular destination place to make one’s mark in the world.  But this means a lot of idiots make their way here and  buy their way into the city.  This means lots of rich kids running around in suits with the right social networks and college degrees from some Ivy league. This means a lot of art brats partying at every run down wherehouse pretending to be poor.while their moms have bought them a co-op  in my quickly gentrifying neighborhood.  People here are NOT smarter!!!  They may be more quick at being sneakier - they may be more fashionable - but definitely not smarter  - ?whatever smartness means?

Here are some faulty assumptions that Joan displays in her NYC chauvinism:
1.) Joan ascribes to the the urbanization effect of NYC which maintains that the city itself sustains international competition.  This assume that proximity of businesses and people leads to economic productivity.  But in management literature we know that successful firms time and time again rely on the internal knowledge of their workers,  internal technology capacity, access to external knowledge resources, and efficient use of client knowledge that leads to a succesful businesses
2.) Joan assumes that NYC is a world city that is a resource base for the best kind of knowledge production, that it is a bounded place where people draw upon knowledge within the city limits.  This is not true because as we know NYC is not bounded –people who live in the city encounter so many tourists, out-of-towners and New Yorkers themselves travel all around the world. People have wide and deep networks that extend beyond NYC.  
3.) Joan also speaks of NYC as if it was a Social Darwinian playground, where everyone comes here and those with the “right” skills to work hard stay in the city.
4.) Shs also assumes NYC is only made up a people who move from other places -hellllloo did we just forget about all the people who in Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx who were born and raised in NYC?
5.) She assumes everyone comes to NYC for the same reason - individual pursuit of success.  The reality is that people come here for diff reasons - most people come for economic reasons but this does not mean that everyone comes for individualistic purposes.